Self-management: This is how it helps you in work and life

Self-management describes the ability to control your behavior in such a way that you achieve your goals. Here you can find out what the concept encompasses and how you can apply it.

If you set goals in your professional and private life, self-management will help you to achieve them. Self-management refers to a person’s ability to effectively organize their life and work to achieve their goals and maximize their productivity.

It includes the ability to prioritize, use time effectively, motivate oneself, make decisions, and solve problems. Furthermore, self-management also includes knowledge about one’s own strengths and weaknesses as well as the ability to learn and criticize.

Through self-management, you can therefore lead a more self-determined life that you can actively shape according to your own ideas.

What is self management?

The concept originally comes from clinical behavioral therapy, where it is intended to help clients to cope with their problems independently and to achieve better self-control. In the meantime, however, self-management has also become widespread in the professional context. According to qualified psychologist Jörg Pscherer, self-management not only has a proven positive connection with increased life satisfaction, but also with greater willingness to perform.

This effect is based in particular on the principle of self-efficacy as a psychological factor. What is meant by this is the firm conviction of a person that they can also master and successfully overcome difficult situations and challenges on their own. To do this, she in turn draws on skills that are part of self-management, for example the ability to motivate yourself, set goals, plan and manage your time.

According to Pscherer, successful self-management requires that personal goals and values ​​are reconciled in order to achieve self-imposed goals and experience satisfaction. Self-management strives for a unity of rational goals and emotional needs while accepting limits. Successful self-managers adjust goals to maintain their own health, distinguish the changeable from the unchangeable, and use the opportunities that exist in a given situation.

On the other hand, in many coaching sessions, self-management is conveyed that resembles a “hodgepodge of psychological and business optimization strategies”. There is then the danger of striving for perfected effectiveness, so that the “idealized effort at self-regulation” often ends in burnout.

Self-management step 1: Set goals

So it turns out that self-management is not an isolated skill, but consists of different competencies that work together to make it possible to achieve goals. According to a handbook from the Hanover University of Applied Sciences, the self-management process extends over five basic steps that have different requirements:

1. objective
2. planning
3. Decision
4. realization
5. control

Start setting goals that align with your values. If you work towards something meaningful for you, it has a positive effect on life satisfaction. Of course, this assumes that you know what makes you happy and what motivates you. Sabine Wesely from the Hanover University of Applied Sciences therefore recommends being careful when setting goals. Take the time to become aware of your values ​​and to define what constitutes success and meaning for you. For example, you can use the “House of Life” model:

• In this model, the “House of Life” consists of a roof that represents your goals and values, six pillars that support the roof, and a foundation that reflects your current situation.
• The model describes success as the path from the foundation to the roof. The roof is supported by the six pillars: 1. Profession/work, 2. Leisure time, 3. Relationships, 4. Health, 5. Housing and 6. Finances.
• Success is therefore not just about a career, but means the balance of several areas of life.
• Look at the foundation, so take stock: Where are you right now in terms of the six areas of life?
• Then look at the roof: where do you want to go?
• Then think about what you can do to become happier in each area of ​​your life.
• The stronger each pillar (the happier you are in that area), the more stable the house (the more aligned you are in achieving your goals in life).

With this model you can define success individually, because it describes success in relation to your initial situation and your values.

As soon as you have a vision for your success, it is about formulating this vision into realistically realizable private or professional goals. The SMART method can help with this:

• The “S” stands for “specific”. So make your goals as specific as possible.
• The “M” stands for “measurable”. Formulate your goals in such a way that they are measurable, for example using numbers or criteria.
• The “A” stands for “attractive”. Set your goals in a way that motivates you.
• The “R” stands for “realistic”. Formulate your goals in such a way that they are feasible for you and can be implemented by yourself.
• The “T” stands for “terminated”. Formulate your goals with a specific point in time.

Self-management step 2: plan goals

Once you have formulated your goals, you move on to the second phase of self-management: planning. Here you think about what you have to do (by) when in order to achieve your goals. Time management plays an important role in this. It serves to efficiently use the time you have available.

Helpful methods for effective time management:

• Set milestones: These are important points in the project where you want specific results to be achieved. So break down your goals into sub-goals. This is how you achieve your overarching goal step by step.

• To-do list: This is used to give you an overview of upcoming tasks and their respective due dates. You can use a to-do list to help you prioritize certain tasks. To do this, create a table with three columns that represent different levels of urgency: “Important today”, “Important soon”, “Important someday”. Assign your tasks to these columns. There should not be too many in the first column, because they have priority and must be dealt with immediately. Check the status of your tasks regularly and tick off what you have already implemented.

• Eisenhower Box: You can use the Eisenhower Box to prioritize and efficiently complete your tasks. The box is divided into four quadrants based on the combination of urgency and importance. In the first quadrant, you should prioritize important and urgent tasks and get them done immediately. In the second quadrant, important but not urgent tasks are planned and scheduled. The third quadrant contains urgent but unimportant tasks that you can delegate. Finally, in the fourth quadrant, unimportant and non-urgent tasks are eliminated or postponed.

Self-management step 3: Make a decision

The ability to make decisions is essential for effective self-management. After all, you can formulate and plan goals – but the practical implementation requires that you make a conscious decision to act. However, what often keeps us from making this decision is perhaps the fear of failing to achieve our goals. Then the WOOP method (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) can help you, with which you

1. define a specific wish (“Wish”),
2. intended to bring about a specific result (“outcome”).
3. In doing so, you consider which obstacles stand in the way of fulfilling your wish (“obstacle”),
4. and develop a plan for removing these obstacles (“Plan”).

Thinking ahead about potential obstacles and making a plan for how to deal with them can help you make the decision to go about tackling your goals.

Self-management steps 4 and 5: implement and control goals

You have formulated your goals, planned them and decided to implement them. The next step in the self-management process is implementation. In this phase, you complete the tasks necessary to achieve your goals. You can find out what’s coming up from your to-do list or the Eisenhower box.

These tips and methods can be helpful for efficiently completing tasks:

• Deep Work: Deep work is a method that allows you to work more concentrated. It includes, for example, meeting fixed deadlines in which you only devote yourself to demanding tasks. To do this, you turn off all possible distractions, such as your smartphone.

• Motivate yourself: Self-management also includes not losing your self-motivation. Achieving your own goals requires you to keep going. This can be difficult when you strive for perfection. Not completing a task one hundred percent is not a problem, because even a partial success is a success. The Pareto principle states that 80 percent of the work can be done with 20 percent of the effort. However, you have to invest 80 percent of the effort in the remaining 20 percent. You can find more tips here: Self-motivation: How to overcome your weaker self.

While you are working through your tasks, it is important to check again and again whether you are actually getting closer to your goal:

• If you have formulated your goals according to the SMART scheme, it’s easy. Goals formulated in this way contain measurable components, i.e. numbers (e.g. the amount of money you want to save) or criteria (the language level you want to achieve when learning a foreign language).
• Alternatively, you can ask others to give you feedback on your work.

Regular checks make it possible to quickly take countermeasures if you notice that you are not yet on the right track. For example, you can adjust a goal so that it is more achievable for you (lower amount of savings or longer duration of the savings project).

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